Articles from August, 2012

President Barack Obama quipped that Republicans have said some "wonderful" things about him during this week’s national convention in Tampa.
Speakers contrasted the president’s record to GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s. Others claimed Obama has never worked in business and doesn’t want farm kids to do basic chores.
PolitiFact looked at those claims and others.
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And check our Facebook page throughout the day. We update it with new convention fact-checks morning and night.
Read summaries of some of our latest checks below. Look for a roundup of our fact-checks of Romney’s speech in Saturday’s newspaper.

The speeches keep coming and our Truth-O-Meter keeps rolling.
The Republican National Convention in Tampa scheduled hours of back-to-back speeches pounding President Barack Obama on what they say is his inability to bring about change we can believe in.
Who can get the job done? We’ll let you guess the GOP’s answer. And here’s a hint: The theme of Wednesday's session was "We Can Change It."
GOP luminaries focused on fiscal responsibility and the economy, which was good news for PolitiFact. Those are two of our favorite subjects. And speaking of the economy, we added a fact-check of a top Obama campaign official who made a claim about Mitt Romney’s position on a popular tax policy.
Read these summaries of our latest checks below.
Want to comment? Go to our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/politifact.georgia) or find us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/politifactga).
And check our Facebook page throughout the day. We update it with new convention fact checks morning and night.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney took center stage Tuesday on PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter as Republicans geared up to nominate him at their Tampa convention.
First, we tested a talking point GOP leaders are using to cast Mitt Romney as a self-made man: That Romney "gave away his father's inheritance." We also checked Romney’s critique of the economy and its effects on young people.
The economy is perhaps the Obama campaign’s biggest hurdle, and Democrats know it. One of his top campaign aides tried to defend him by saying that the recovery during President Barack Obama’s term is stronger than President Ronald Reagan’s. Wrong.
We also checked an attack on Obama by Romney’s vice presidential pick U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan about declining household incomes. He was wrong, too.
Read these summaries of our findings below.
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And watch for us during the conventions. We’re providing daily Truth-O-Meter updates for this week’s Republican convention in Tampa and next week’s Democratic convention in Charlotte.

Hurricane Isaac may have shut down the Republican National Convention on Monday. But the Truth-O-Meter was unstoppable.
PolitiFact arrived in Tampa just as former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist made a surprise endorsement of President Barack Obama in The Tampa Bay Times. He served as governor as a Republican, then ran an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate as an independent.
We completed two fact-checks that touched on Crist’s endorsement.
Medicare remained a chief concern as the festivities began. Presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney accused Obama of hypocrisy, while his vice presidential pick, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, said the Romney-Ryan plan "does not affect" benefits for anyone 55 or older.
Read these summaries of our findings below.
Want to comment on our rulings? Go to our Facebook page or find us on Twitter.
PolitiFact will provide daily Truth-O-Meter updates on the GOP before moving on to Charlotte next week to keep tabs on the Democrats.

PolitiFact and PolitiFact Georgia will be using the Truth-O-Meter to rate statements made by politicians and power brokers at the Republican and Democratic conventions. To kick off the GOP convention, we review the "GOP Pledge-O-Meter," which tracks promises made by Republicans during the 2010 midterm election cycle.

By Molly Moorhead. Published on Monday, August 27th, 2012 at 6:00 a.m.

The Obama and Romney campaigns are engaged in a fierce battle of connect the dots.
Faced with incomplete and sometimes skimpy details to attack their opponents, the campaigns are making some overly generous assumptions and -- sometimes -- drawing some wildly inaccurate conclusions.
Here are some of our recent fact-checks on campaign ads that try to connect the dots:

Seems like just yesterday that the big Republican talking point was that Obamacare cuts $500 billion from Medicare. Now, it's $700 billion.
That's the number -- $716 billion to be precise -- that's gotten tossed around this week.

Priorities USA Action, a super PAC supporting President Barack Obama, released an ad that uses the trappings of the Olympics to attack Mitt Romney.

By Louis Jacobson. Published on Wednesday, August 1st, 2012 at 11:35 a.m.

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